Mozilla developing own mobile phone OS

Makers of popular the web browser Mozilla has unveiled it is going to develop a mobile operating system, under the project name of ‘Boot to Gecko’.

Boot to Gecko’s goal is to build a complete standalone operating system for the open web, with new web APIs in the area of telephony, SMS, camera, USB, Bluetooth and NFC.

Mozilla is hoping that applications developed for the OS will be the equals of native apps built for the iPhone, Android, and WP7.

The source code will be released in real-time, as the operating system is being developed for code writers to contribute and start to write software for the platform.

Boot to Gecko (B2G) will be lite-OS in much the same way as Google’s Chrome platform for laptops, where the applications are written in HTML5 and run from the web rather than being based on the actual mobile phone.

The apps aren’t necessary going to be confined to run from a mobile version of Firefox either, as the company is just looking to provide the building blocks of the new OS – where Android even started the same way.

Mozilla will release the code within time to http://github.com/andreasgal/B2G, where it has also created a WIKI entry on their website that explains the ins and outs of the project – https://wiki.mozilla.org/B2G.